Aireona's Little Secret
by Kate Matheson
Summary: This is a spin off of a fan fic writing group. On the group the character in this story is poised to become Mrs. Snape. In this scene Aireona Taylor had just discovered that she has a secret to share with her new family.


Aireona's Little Secret

The date was set. The guests were invited. The cake was ordered. Her dress hung in a closet in her old apartment. The baby was due in six months. The vows were written. The honeymoon plans were set.

She wondered if anyone would notice the one teeny, tiny detail she'd slipped into her list of wedding arrangements that had been completed. One person would, she was sure. The one she wasn't quite ready to tell just yet. The father. The groom. It had to be just right when she told him, she needed the perfect atmosphere, the correct turn of phrase.

She sat back in her chair behind the desk in her office and closed her eyes. The little baby growing inside her was no bigger than a breath, but she held her hand over it protectively all the same. "You, my little one, are going to make a lot of people very happy," she said softly.

Aireona held her breath for a moment, then let it out slowly. If it was a joke, she'd be laughing by now. But there was no joke. She couldn't imagine how this had crept up on her, that she was so many weeks along before realizing that anything was wrong. Well. Not wrong. But out of the ordinary. Stress from the wedding plans, she'd told herself, worries about integrating households and working full time, she'd assured herself.

Until at last she could no longer ignore the glaringly obvious. She wasn't just "late." It wasn't just the flu. She was a healer, Aireona chided herself. She should have known. But she hadn't. Not until that very morning, sitting in this very spot, when she'd looked at the calendar and added up the dates. And then she'd known. With absolute certainty, she'd known that they had a baby on the way.

She worried, though. About a lot of things. Oh, he would chuckle at her, kiss her cheeks and tell her she was glowing, radiant, even. But she worried about her hips, she worried about her weight, she worried that he wouldn't look at her and be short of breath. She worried that the children – all six hundred of them – would look at her and decide that all the lectures she'd given on the importance of taking care of oneself were nothing but rubbish. She worried that the three that resided in their house already would look at the pair of them in horror, or worse, shame.

Worries itemized, Aireona opened her eyes, unsurprised to find them filled with tears. She let them fall, one by one until she could see clearly again, and then she looked down at her flat stomach. "You're nothing to cry over are you, my love?" she asked the baby. "You're a gift. Just like your brother and your sisters. But, Merlin, am I some kind of scared," she admitted to the empty office.

She stood up from her desk chair rather suddenly. The hospital ward was no longer where Aireona wished to be. She locked up and made her way into the corridor, strolling silently through the dimly lit passages, memories flooding over her. A lifetime paved with pretty lies and broken dreams, until someone stepped out of the shadows. Then she tripped and fell head over heals in love with him. The night she'd first moved in with him had been one of those nights. Tangled, sweaty, untamed. And the sweetest night she'd ever spent. Warm and dark, the moon full, the breeze sweet. Holding on tight, holding to something delicate, rolling forward, covering them with the innocence they craved, making them cling and claw. Breath for breath, skin to sweaty skin, every part of it just right. She could still feel his fingers and his breath on her skin if she closed her eyes and thought hard enough. The sweet taste of his kiss on her lips, the soft, tender way he'd said he loved her.

It was that night that this had happened, Aireona guessed. A souvenir of the precious memory of their first time. She wandered the castle while the truth sank in, and brought a contented smile to her lips. "How fitting, how perfect, that you would come from that," Aireona whispered to her child.

Her shoes were quiet on the stone floors of the ancient castle. The night was still, and for once, it seemed the children were all obeying the rules. She hadn't run across a single soul during her leisurely walk. There were two windows ahead that looked out over the lake, and Aireona stopped to stare out them.

The lake was where she had first met him, where they'd spend subsequent days and weeks and months and years learning about each other. Falling in love, but never realizing what they'd done. Funny, how the passing of seventeen years hadn't dulled something they'd never known they were missing.

With that thought, it hit Aireona like cold water that she missed him; needed him, desperately, and immediately. She set off for the stairs, taking them carefully and a set at a time until she ended up in front of another door.

Hand still protectively over her abdomen, over her baby, Aireona went inside. She went home.


End file.
